Here's how it started. I was reading the obits in this morning's paper like I always do. Sunday's newspaper always has the most prolific obituary notices. That's probably not the nicest way to say it either. What's with my inability to phrase things correctly today?!? Abundant. That's the word. Sunday's newspaper always has the most abundant obits. Today being Sunday was no exception. The outtake below is just a portion of a page of this morning's obituary notices.
And there I was in the far left hand column, with my nickname, Jim, in bold letters with six little lines underneath. And, of course, when I recovered from my initial shock of seeing the notice of my death in print I began to understand that this Jim was not actually me but someone with the same nickname and surname only. The middle initial, the suffix name, the age and the survivor listed made it clear that I was not dead after all. And I mean no disrespect for those who have passed on before us. My condolences are extended to the surviving families and friends of those listed on the obituary extract pictured here, including Mr. King. There were two things that struck me when I saw this notice. The first, of course, was seeing my name. But while I was recovering from the surprise of observing my name in the obituaries and was processing from a "what the...?" stage to a "Oh, that's not me" stage I was feeling some disappointment for the fact my notice was so short and concise. Abbreviated. Condensed. Like there were never any eventful things in my life worth mentioning like my neighbors' in the adjacent columns. But that's probably because as an amateur genealogist I tend to look at obituaries as a source of information. The more, the better. Yeah, I want data for piecing together all those bits of information any historian needs to reconstruct the timeline and heritage of some one's life. God, have I really become that detached that death notices are just another note, just another entry in the log, just another clue to use as source information for genealogical files? I hope not.
When you stop to think about it, obituaries are for the living. Why else would I look at them every day? Yes, I'm sure aging has a lot to do with it as we all get closer to feeling our mortality. But I'm not sure how many of us stop to take the time to write our own obituary for publication after our death. I haven't. Maybe some of us do, and that's fine, but I think most of us leave it for our families to put together. Otherwise, it would be like bragging, wouldn't it? "Oh, yes, I did this and I did that, and then I accomplished this, and then I went there where, as everybody knows, I was famous for being the best this or that....etc." Nope, I don't think so. I think the best ones are prepared by those still living. Some pretty overboard but others clear, concise, and to the point. He or she will be sadly missed is for us, not for the departed. And perhaps, in my humble opinion, that's the way it should be. Whatever we can afford and whatever we can think of to include should be enough in every case.
I read somewhere that an old Chinese proverb describes the best life as an uneventful life. I'm not sure what that means but when you think about it, most of us live uneventful lives. There are peaks and valleys of excitement and mundane living to be sure, but most of us are not going to have biographies written or films made to record for history our action-packed, fun-filled, glory-saturated, earth-shattering eventful lives. So maybe the six line obituary notice for my namesake in the Sunday obituaries says it best. He lived. He died. He is survived by family. Enough said.
